Re: [Mailman-Users] slightly OT: on not becoming a spam source

[Jonathan Dill]

On May 30, 2008, at 11:00 AM, David Newman wrote:


On 5/30/08 4:35 AM, Larry Stone wrote:

On 5/29/08 11:37 PM, Jim Popovitch at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:18 AM, David Newman <[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>

wrote:
Hmmm. I must be missing something, as the system is still  
associating each

Message-ID with all 250 list subscribers.

VERP has nothing to do with Message-ID, and everything to do with
Return-Path and Sender:   ;-)

With VERP and personalization, the Return-Path, instead of being
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]" becomes
"[EMAIL PROTECTED]".
I think you said you're using Postfix in which case you need
"recipient_delimiter = +" in your main.cf so it knows about the  
plus signs

in the return paths.


ACK. Yes, that's in main.cf.


When you then get the AOL TOS e-mail, you can figure out who the list
recipient was as while AOL redacts the AOL recipient, they don't  
touch the

Return-Path.


I wish this were true, but it appears AOL gets to the Return-Path too:

Return-Path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

So neither Return-ID nor Message-ID identifies who's complaining.

But...this might be something. The next message header contains an  
ESMTP ID that corresponds with exactly one AOL user in maillog:


Received: from rly-mh07.mx.aol.com (rly-mh07.mail.aol.com  
[172.21.166.143]) by air-mh02.mail.aol.com (v121.4) with ESMTP id  
MAILINMH024-be4483f8d3acf; Fri, 30 May 2008 01:14:45 -0400
Received: from mail.somedomain.com (mail.somedomain.com  
[666.666.666.666]) by rly-mh07.mx.aol.com (v121.5) with ESMTP id  
MAILRELAYINMH074-be4483f8d3acf; Fri, 30 May 2008 01:14:35 -0400

Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1])
by mail.somedomain.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B55685B31C0
for ; Thu, 29 May 2008 22:14:34 - (UTC)


[EMAIL PROTECTED]:log# grep -i B55685B31C0 /var/log/maillog

May 29 22:14:34 mail postfix/smtpd[25785]: B55685B31C0:  
client=localhost[127.0.0.1]
May 29 22:14:34 mail postfix/cleanup[21262]: B55685B31C0: message- 
id=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
May 29 22:14:34 mail postfix/qmgr[23040]: B55685B31C0: from=<[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>, size=13344, nrcpt=1 (queue active)


Given the above, is "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" the subscriber that's  
complaining? Or is it just a coincidence that that AOL user got  
listed first?


Ostensibly, AOL does this to prevent listwashing, but it's not exactly  
helpful.  I think AOL strips out a lot of the message headers in the  
TOS reports, so you don't get all of the Received headers and message- 
ids.  How I dealt with it is that I made a custom footer in the VERP  
configuration that says something like:


This e-mail was delivered to foobar at aol.com

I suppose that it would be better if you could somehow stick that in  
to a hash that only you could decipher, especially if AOL decides at  
some point to strip all e-mail addresses out of the messages, but it's  
better than nothing.


That shows up in the TOS messages, I stuff them all into a mailbox and  
then have a script that grabs the addresses from the footer and  
unsubscribes those addresses.


I also got some good advice I think from someone on this list to put a  
"gentle reminder" at the top of each message with the unsub links etc  
right there.  It says something like "You are receiving this message  
because you subscribed to the blah blah newsletter on the example.com  
website."


Also, maybe you are already doing this, but a gentle reminder for you  
that may help with these AOL reports, you should absolutely require  
people to confirm their subscription and not just add them to the  
mailing list, even if they provided their e-mail address some other  
way for example filled out a comment card at an event.  If people  
can't be bothered to confirm their subscription, then they can't be  
bothered to follow the instructions to unsubscribe either and will  
just click the "Report Spam" button when they no longer wish to  
receive the newsletter.  Things used to be different, but now days  
failing to confirm subscriptions can get you blacklisted, and even  
your website taken offline.  That actually happened to someone who  
ignored my insistence that they should require confirmations, arguing  
that it would be "too difficult" for their newsletter subscribers.





many thanks

dn

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailman post log failures

[Jonathan Dill]

On Apr 18, 2008, at 1:01 PM, Charles Marcus wrote:

> On 4/18/2008, Jonathan Dill ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote:
>> If you are using a separate e-mail relay, could also be firewall
>> issue,
>
> Is there by any chance a CISCO router in the mix anywhere?

Yes exactly, I have seen the same type of thing with SonicWALL as  
well--the firewall sends back an RST to kill the connection, and the  
server thinks that the other end dropped the connection and you get  
"Connection unexpectedly closed".  If you have IPS and "deep packet  
inspection" there are even more reasons the firewall could decide to  
kill the connection, even if the allow / accept rules all look  
correct, hopefully there is some sign in the firewall logs if that is  
the case.

Even if there is not a firewall or router and something completely  
different is going on, you can learn a lot by picking apart a packet  
trace off the server or especially the firewall, the "follow tcp  
stream" option in wireshark or ethereal is priceless, then you can  
follow the conversation.  Even if everything is happening in loopback  
(as it should be if it is all supposed to be contained on one server)  
you can still sniff on the loopback connection.  Or you may discover  
that some of the traffic is getting sent out on the wire that is  
supposed to stay on the same box e.g. if DNS or /etc/hosts is not up  
to date.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Mailman post log failures

[Jonathan Dill]

On Apr 18, 2008, at 11:55 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:

> Darren G Pifer wrote:
>>
>> I am seeing these errors in the smtp-failure log:
>>
>> Apr 18 09:11:30 2008 (1231) Low level smtp error: (104, 'Connection
>> reset by peer'), msgid: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>> Apr 18 09:13:42 2008 (19445) delivery to [EMAIL PROTECTED] failed with  
>> code
>> -1: Connection unexpectedly closed
>> Apr 18 09:13:42 2008 (19445) delivery to [EMAIL PROTECTED] failed with  
>> code
>> -1: (104, 'Connection reset by peer')
>>
>> I saw a lot of message in the retry directory.
>
>
> Your outgoing MTA (SMTP server) is rudely not accepting mail from
> Mailman. These messages will be queued (in retry/) and retried at 15
> minute intervals for five days before Mailman gives up on them.

If you are using a separate e-mail relay, could also be firewall  
issue, or maybe the relay does not allow the mailman box to use it as  
a relay.  Maybe the hostname or IP of the old server is still used  
somewhere, or maybe you need to fix DNS if the new server has a  
different address.  Also I have encountered problems where someone  
stuck an entry in /etc/hosts to work around some problem, then it  
caused problems later because we forgot about it.


>
>
> If you can't figure out what's going on, there are some tips at
> 
> and
>  req=show&file=faq06.014.htp>.
>
> Do you have SMTPHOST and/or SMTPPORT set in mm_cfg.py to some host/ 
> port
> that is not appropriate after the move?
>
> Can Mailman successfully send notices to 1 recipient, or does this
> happen with all mail?
>
> -- 
> Mark Sapiro <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>The highway is for gamblers,
> San Francisco Bay Area, Californiabetter use your sense - B. Dylan
>
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Need capability of link to archived messages

[Jonathan Dill]

On Apr 16, 2008, at 11:29 AM, Darren G Pifer wrote:
> We have a list that we use for keeping backup logs and sometimes these
> logs get rather large.  The list is moderated and sometimes the size  
> of
> the message goes beyond the "Maximum length in KB of message body"  
> which
> requires approval. The owner of the list wanted to know, as I do, is  
> it
> possible to get the e-mail of the message but the message contain an
> embedded URL to the stored archive instead an e-mail message with the
> log?  I am not sure but it sounds to me like some sort of webmail  
> app to
> me is needed.  Is this capability in Mailman or has someone modified
> Mailman to include this sort of functionality?

Just a thought, but maybe you could do something like that with  
MHonArc or with an email-driven trouble ticketing system like Mantis  
or OTRS.

http://www.mhonarc.org/
http://www.mantisbt.org/
http://otrs.org/

The potential advantage of something like Mantis is that it supports  
the business process by sending a "ticket" to the operator who must  
then do something to confirm that they did what they were supposed to  
do, they could also annotate and "escalate" the ticket if there is a  
problem that the operator cannot solve.

Another approach would be something like email-to-blog then generate  
an RSS feed that operators subscribe to, but like using mailman for  
this purpose, that process still does not validate that the operator  
took some action in response to the message.

A more sophisticated approach would be to tie this to an NMS like  
Zenoss or Nagios with a custom plugin that checks the log output and  
automatically raises an alert if some action is needed, the operator  
must then take some action to clear the alert.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] howto cancell a message

[Jonathan Dill]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> hi people, just a begginer question :
>
> if i send a wrong message to a mailman list, there is a way to stop  
> delivering this message?
>   
Unless you have a slow server, a very large mailing lists, or a slow 
internet connection, by the time that you decide to stop the message, it 
is probably already too late.  If this is for example an announcements 
list / newsletter, the best thing is to have all messages moderated, or 
even set up a separate "test" list so that you can do a "dry run" to 
make sure everything looks OK before you send it out to the real list.

I have a client with a ~50,000 subscriber newsletter that goes out once 
a week, and they always send it out to an internal test list first so 
they can check for spelling errors or anything else that might be 
embarrassing before the message goes out.  Even so, I did have to abort 
the newsletter on a couple occasions.  By the time that they realized 
that there was a problem, mailman had already done its job, all of the 
messages were sitting in the postfix queue.  At that point, the exact 
procedure depends on what mail server you are using e.g. postfix, qmail, 
sendmail etc.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Integration with OpenLDAP or AD directory?

[Jonathan Dill]

Martin S wrote:
> Is it possible to integrate Mailman with AD (preferably) or OpenLDAP? Anyone
> tried doing this somewhere?
> I'll have a number of users in AD which will form base for three systems.
> Now there is talk of integrating email list functionality into the system,
> and as I have some experience with Mailman I've been thinking of trying to
> the integration to work.
>   
A few years back, I did that with iPlanet LDAP, just ran a batch job out 
of cron to do an ldap query to LDIF, massage that to a list of e-mail 
addresses, compare to list of subscribers, then add or remove 
addresses.  Surely, there is a more elegant way to do it, also not 
hardly instantaneous.  You might be able to use Penrose or ApacheDS to 
make some glue as an LDAP front end into AD if needed.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Removing admin email addresses

[Jonathan Dill]

Spyro Polymiadis wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Im using mailman 2.1.9, and ive got close to 100 mail lists on it.
>
> We just have had one of our IT guys leave our company, and I was wondering if 
> there was an easy (bulk, cli) way to remove/change the email address from the 
> "List of Administrators" (2nd text box in General Options)
>
> Otherwise, its very a very cumbersome job to log in to each list and remove 
> the address manually.
>   
When I did something similar, I wrote some ad hoc scripts using 
"config_list -o" to dump the configs for all of the lists to text 
files--saving the "pristine" version in case I needed to undo all the 
changes--then use regex replacement to make the changes I wanted and 
dump to a "new" config file, then "config_list -i" to load the modified 
configurations.  I guess it was about 5 yrs ago, probably with shell 
commands and awk, I'm sure it wasn't pretty but it got the job done, 
doubt that I have any of the scripts that I used since that was a 
previous job.  See "config_list --help" for the options and command 
syntax, you might have to login as the mailman user depending how you 
have things configured.

Naturally, make sure you have a good backup in case something goes 
awry.  Depending on your bravery level, it might be a good idea to do it 
when the lists are less active, and possibly shut down the MTA 
temporarily or block access to it when you make the changes so you don't 
have "bits in flight" when the changes occur and have something untoward 
happen with the queue.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Removing admin email addresses

[Jonathan Dill]

Spyro Polymiadis wrote:
> Which method would be best suited for that scenario?
> Also, is any of the script destructive to the lists themselves? Ie, if it 
> didn't run right or something it wouldn't affect the list accepting emails to 
> it, or blowing away the rest of the list config?
>   
That's why I would first do a "config_list -o" to "benchmark" the 
configs for ALL of the lists before you make any changes, "just in 
case".  Use a for / do loop in shell, dump the list config to 
listname.cfg for e.g. for each list.  Looks like you shouldn't need to 
load the entire config but just the changes, not sure if that was the 
case or not 5+ yrs ago when I was doing it or if what I did was overkill.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] problems with new web host and "too many complaints"

[Jonathan Dill]

Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
>
> How was the "opt-in" done?  Was it done with Mailman's confirmation 
> process, or  would it have been possible for person A to accidently or 
> maliciously get person B on the list?  If the latter, I would consider 
> the list mailing unacceptable.
If the list was hosted on one of our servers, we definitely would have 
refused to host the list under these conditions.  However, in this case 
they own the server, which is located at their own office, and they have 
asked me for advice as a consultant.  I have told them before that they 
should require confirmation and explained why they should do that.  
Sometimes, people have to learn things the hard way, nothing I can do 
about that.  However, sometimes it is helpful to have comments from 
other people and other sources that I can point to that corroborate what 
I have been telling them all along, "best practices" and all that.

My position at this point is "this is a policy issue, not a technical 
issue."  I have warned them that trying to sneak around the problem by 
technical means is just begging to have their account terminated as a 
violation of the TOS, and that moving to another hosting service is no 
guarantee that they won't run into the same objections again.
> That is a good idea.  This is really the only way your customer can 
> continue with the mass mailing.  There may have been things that your 
> customer might have done earlier to prevent this state of affairs, but 
> at this point, what the hosting providers are suggesting is the only 
> way forward, unless your customer can document how each address came 
> to be added to the list with some evidence that the  person who reads 
> mail at that addresses confirmed the process.
They do have a paper trail for some of the subscriptions from paper 
forms that people filled out at certain events, but I don't think the 
documentation has been maintained with the thought in mind that someday 
this could be "audited", but again, this is really a policy and clerical 
issue and not a technical issue.  Possibly, I could help them to find a 
solution to better manage the documentation, beyond that, it is really 
outside my scope of work.  I have managed several other lists for other 
customers on other servers (albeit much smaller than this uber list) all 
of those have required confirmation, have never run into to this type of 
problem with the other lists.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] problems with new web host and "too many complaints"

[Jonathan Dill]

Brad Knowles wrote:
> Well, you haven't really given us any real details as to the nature of 
> the problem or the nature of the complaints.  So, I'm not sure that 
> anyone can give you any advice that will be useful.
>
> I can say that I'd expect to see more support from your new ISP, and 
> if they're willing to treat you this way this soon after you switched, 
> I have to wonder how they're going to treat you in the future.
First, I want to say thanks to Kyle Banerjee who responded off list with 
a lot of great advice.  To summarize the problem again, the complaints 
are really in response to the newsletter.  The web host in question has 
had some bad press lately, mainly with respect to being a major source 
of blog comment spam, so possibly they are overreacting to compensate.

In a nutshell, it is way too easy for people to sign up for the list, 
which is what I have been telling them all along, but unfortunately, 
they had to learn this the hard way.  They should include their phone 
number in the newsletter to give people another way to respond, since 
some people are paranoid about clicking on links in messages.  For 
CAN-SPAM compliance, they should also include their postal address, 
which they have not been doing.

Trying to find a technical solution to the problem, such as using a 
different domain name in the messages, is pretty much begging to have 
their account terminated altogether per AUP, especially since the host's 
AUP is incredibly vague with respect to spam--they pretty much get to 
dictate whether they think it's spam or not, including requiring to ask 
all of the subscribers to opt-in again or be removed from the list.

Jonathan
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[Mailman-Users] problems with new web host and "too many complaints"

[Jonathan Dill]

Greetings,

I hope this is not too OT, hopefully someone here has had a similar 
experience and can offer some practical advice, I'm not sure what to 
tell this customer at this point.

I have a customer who has a fairly large opt-in only mailman mailing 
list (~40,000 subscribers) that they use to send out a weekly 
newsletter, people seem to primarily subscribe for the weekly contest 
for free tickets to events.  Unsubscribe links are conspicuous, and 
people who otherwise complain are unsubscribed from the list.

Recently, they moved their web hosting to a new service, and the new 
service shut down their website because they had received "too many 
complaints" about the newsletter, which mentions the website address.  I 
would have thought it would be easier to follow the unsubscribe link 
than track down the hosting company for the website, which makes me 
wonder if these "complaints" are being generated by some kind of 
antispam software.  The host forwarded a "sample" but stripped out some 
of the message headers, so all I can tell is that it really was in 
response to the newsletter.

Now the web host is talking about requiring that all of the subscribers 
be required to "opt in" again or be unsubscribed from the list--to be 
honest, that might not be a bad idea, but the customer wants to avoid this.

Has anyone else run into a situation like this and have some practical 
advice?  They have been asking me about technical ways to circumvent the 
problem, but that sounds like a really bad idea to me for several 
reasons, I don't want to be a party to that.  I'm wondering if they 
should just say to heck with this hosting company, but the customer is 
concerned that moving to yet another ISP is going to be just as painful 
a process as it was moving to this one, and I am not entirely sure that 
they wouldn't run into the same "complaint" problem with another host.

Thanks,
Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Bounce issues with Yahoo

[Jonathan Dill]

Harold Paulson wrote:
> away.  All of the normal posts would go right through.  Members who  
> send from the wrong account would get the usual Mailman notice.   
> Occasionally wrong-account-posters would have to wait a long time on  
> their notice.
>   
For the sender, there is a very simple solution to "whitelist" his or 
her own e-mail addresses which I have used myself:  subscribe the other 
e-mail address then set "Mail delivery" to "Disabled."  And if it's that 
important to the sender that his or her messages get through, then set 
"Receive acknowledgment" to "Yes."  In many ways, I think that is a 
better solution than expressly whitelisting addresses elsewhere.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Bounce issues with Yahoo

[Jonathan Dill]

Greg Lindahl wrote:
> 7E7E824F81  634 Wed Mar  1 09:03:21  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> (host mx3.mail.yahoo.com[67.28.113.10] said: 451 VS5-MF Excessive unknown 
> recipients - possible Open Relay 
> http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/mail/spam/spam-18.html (#4.4.5) 205.217.153.43 
> (in reply to MAIL FROM command))
>  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>   
I find a lot of stuff by Googling "VS5-MF Excessive unknown recipients", 
apparently Yahoo may be doing something that is not RFC-compliant, so 
your MTA doesn't know that it should stop trying to resend the message:

http://forum.futuresoft.com/forum/Default.aspx?g=posts&t=248
> (FYI, I'm not an open relay, and I'm not in the RBL's you suggested I
> check.)
>   
I'm not an open relay either, but it would not be the first time that a 
server that is not an open relay got on an RBL either--I have seen that 
happen at least twice.  Also, there are some st00pid RBLs out there run 
by people who don't know what they are doing.

Also, it doesn't sound like the problem in your case, but it's possible 
for a server to have eg. a vulnerable formail script or the like, so it 
is not an open relay per se, but still routing spam.

Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Bounce issues with Yahoo

[Jonathan Dill]

Are you getting explicit REJECT messages from Yahoo! or some other error?

For what it's worth, I think Yahoo may have changed something internally 
lately, like their DNS MX records, you may want to check out what 
address your MTA is trying to send the messages to and compare to dig or 
nslookup for the Yahoo MX records.  Maybe you have some stale DNS info, 
or old messages in the queue that are trying to send to the wrong address.

You may also want to check out some of the RBL lists to find out if you 
are on any of them, there are some very good multi-RBL search tools out 
there.  Chances are that Yahoo! is rejecting you based on RBL data from 
someone else and not their own internal data.  Google "RBL lookup tool" 
or try one of these:

http://www.completewhois.com/rbl_lookup.htm
http://www.mail-abuse.com/lookup.html
http://www.senderbase.org/search

Greg Lindahl wrote:
> Yahoo is delaying delivery of mail from my domain because I look like
> I'm spamming them -- my machine sends a lot of email to non-existent
> Yahoo users. Well, that's because I get a lot of incoming spam from
> fake Yahoo accounts to my Mailman, and I have it configured to send
> back a "you aren't a member" message.
>   
Jonathan
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Re: [Mailman-Users] How to stop these Non-sense mails?

[Jonathan Dill]

Two things you can do with Mailman though, depending on your version of 
mailman:

1. if you don't need to allow non-members to post to the list, you can 
set the default action for non-member posts to "discard"

2. set up something like SpamAssassin, and then set up filters based on 
the SpamAssassin headers, for example "X-Spam-Flag: YES" is just discarded

I have #1 and #2 set up, so 99% of the time I just get an "autodiscard" 
notification, but I don't have to go into the admin interface and 
discard the posts there, so it saves a little time, plus these garbage 
posts aren't "piling up" waiting for me to moderate them.

Lastly--this is a web server thing and not a mailman thing--you may want 
to improve the security of your web server set up to prevent spammers 
from collecting the mailman admin addresses from the web interface, for 
example switch to SSL with at least a self-signed certificate, and 
restrict access to the web interface if possible.

Patrick Bogen wrote:

>On 2/26/06, Jim Popovitch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>  
>
>>Get some good spam prevention software.  Also make sure that your MTA is
>>properly validating who is sending you email (check for thinks like
>>reverse DNS lookups, RBL listings, SPF, DKIM, etc).
>>
>>
>Jim's presented you with what is basically the bottom line.
>
>  
>
>>Kabilan L wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Hai
>>>
>>>I am getting  lot spam-mails.The following are the examples.
>>>How can i stop these  things!!!
>>>  
>>>
>Also, it should be noted that your issue is not really a Mailman
>issue, but rather a  issue.
>
>- Patrick Bogen
>
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Re: [Mailman-Users] Goodmail spells doom for mailing lists?

[Jonathan Dill]

Thanks, I just found this article, which is interesting reading...  If 
anybody has other relevant links, please let me know, I may put a page 
on my web page or at least bookmark them in my furl.net bookmarks.

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/topnews/wpn-60-20060208WhitelistStaysAOLsGoodmailDance.html

Dave Crocker wrote:
>> If you only have a few people on your mailing list, probably nothing, 
>> but if you cross a certain threshhold--I'm guessing either number of 
>> messages sent from you, or number of spam complaints--AOL just starts 
>> rejecting your e-mail, and you have to sign up for their "Enhanced 
>> Whitelist" service, which is apparently being phased out in favor of 
>> Goodmail. 
>
>
> This is explicitly what they are saying they will NOT be doing.
>
> They will continue their current white list and enhanced white list 
> services.
>
> the EWL is probably what solves your problem.
>
>
> d/

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Re: [Mailman-Users] Goodmail spells doom for mailing lists?

[Jonathan Dill]

Sally K Scheer wrote:
> I'm not quite sure what you've just written here. What is AOL blocking?
>   
If you only have a few people on your mailing list, probably nothing, 
but if you cross a certain threshhold--I'm guessing either number of 
messages sent from you, or number of spam complaints--AOL just starts 
rejecting your e-mail, and you have to sign up for their "Enhanced 
Whitelist" service, which is apparently being phased out in favor of 
Goodmail.  Maybe this is not really an issue unless you have a "large" 
mailing list.  My concern was that AOL could start looking at 
Precedence: list / bulk in the e-mail headers, and then numbers do not 
matter.

I have a client with an opt-in only newsletter that goes out monthly, 
you have to go to their website, subscribe to the list, and then confirm 
your subscription.  Or you could fill out a paper form at one of their 
expos which clearly states that if you want to be on the newsletter 
mailing list, you should fill in your e-mail address.  The list 
currently has about 45,000 subscribers, about 15,000 of those are from 
AOL, and as many as 100-200 people may sign up for or leave the list in 
an average month.  Originally, it was more like 55,000, but when I took 
this on, I tuned the "bounce" settings to be more appropriate for a 
monthly "announce only" mailing list, peoples' bounce status was just 
getting reset too quickly.

Sometime last year, AOL just started rejecting our e-mail, and I had to 
register them for the "Enhanced Whitelist" program so the e-mail would 
go to AOL subscribers.  One thing that did do is that I started 
receiving e-mail from AOL every time someone reported the mailing as 
"spam" and then I would unsubscribe them from the list.  People sign up 
for the list, confirm their subscription, and then turn around and 
complain about getting e-mail from us, and then when I take them off the 
list, they complain that they should not have been removed, I just don't 
get it.  There is already a clear "Unsubscribe" link in our e-mail 
messages and we don't make people confirm unsubscription.  It would be 
nice if AOL would give people a "Unsubscribe" button so hopefully people 
would use that instead of just being lazy and clicking the "Spam" 
button, the headers by Mailman already include the necessary information 
to do that.  I would like to make it harder for people to subscribe and 
make people agree to some kind of "Terms of Service" but the client is 
afraid that will scare off technophobes, and I think there is a point to 
that.

Since Enhanced Whitelist is supposedly being phased out and we are 
already on that program, I am wondering if AOL will just start rejecting 
our e-mail again unless we sign up for Goodmail.

Jonathan
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[Mailman-Users] Goodmail spells doom for mailing lists?

[Jonathan Dill]

Has anyone talked about the changes planned by AOL, Yahoo! etc. to 
require "certification" via Goodmail or just be blocked?

http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3581301

http://www.goodmailsystems.com/

What will happen to a mailing list such as this one?  Will AOL and 
Yahoo! users just be out of luck or have to get an e-mail account with 
another provider in order to receive mailing lists?

Jonathan

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[Mailman-Users] abort mailing in progress?

[Jonathan Dill]

Hi folks,

I have Mailman 2.1.7 and I have already shut down the queue daemons, but 
I am looking how to abort the mailing and stop any more messages from 
going out.  The list has about 45,000 subscribers, and it looks like a 
fair number of requests haven't been forwarded to postfix yet.

Thanks,
Jonathan

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[Mailman-Users] "disable_dns_lookups = yes" is a very bad idea

[Jonathan Dill]

Speaking ripe from experience, the Mailman FAQ suggests turning on 
"disable_dns_lookups = yes" to improve the performance of Postfix with 
Mailman, which kind of makes sense.  BUT in Postfix, this disables all 
MX lookups.  So, unless you are going indirectly through a relay that is 
going to handle MX lookups for you, Postfix will begin trying to deliver 
e-mail to stupid addresses.

The symptom was that deferred messages were piling up with "Connection 
refused" errors, at first I thought I was getting blacklisted or 
something.  Finally, I noticed that e-mail to verizon.net for example 
was trying to go to the IN A address verizon.net [206.46.230.37] and not 
the IN MX address relay.verizon.net [206.46.232.11].

I added a note to the Mailman FAQ on this page:

http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/faqw-mm.py

Jonathan
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[Mailman-Users] abort mailing in progress?

[Jonathan Dill]

Hi folks,

I have Mailman 2.1.7 and I have already shut down the queue daemons, but
I am looking how to abort the mailing and stop any more messages from
going out.  The list has about 45,000 subscribers, and it looks like a
fair number of requests haven't been forwarded to postfix yet.

Thanks,
Jonathan


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Re: [Mailman-Users] Explicit Reply Address Stuck

[Jonathan Dill]

> Troy wrote:
> After I added an Explicit Reply to Address, I could not delete it out
> again,   and changing the Directed field to "Poster" didn't seem to
> help either.
> 
> Is this a bug, does anyone know of a fix or work around?

I am definitely not a guru, but I would login as the mailman user and
try:

~/bin/config_list --outputfile listname.txt listname

to "export" the configuration data to an edittable text file, then edit
the file with the text editor of your choice, then "import" the editted
configuration by doing:

~/bin/config_list --inputfile listname.txt

That approach might work around the problem if it is due to some
goofiness in the web interface, web server set up, or file permissions
etc.

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Re: [Mailman-Users] kindly remove me from this and any lists you manage or consult with

[Jonathan Dill]

The only thing I can guess is:

1) some spammer is using mailman-users as a return e-mail address

2) someone has somehow managed to maliciously subscribe you to some
mailing lists

3) you somehow managed to subscribe yourself to the mailing list

I have forwarded your message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] which
should get your request to the list administrator.  We are only
subscribers to the list and we can't do anything about your request.

If someone has maliciously subscribed you to some lists, you are
probably subscribed to a bunch of lists in which case you should try
going to this web page:

http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users

Go to the bottom of the page where it says, "Edit Options" and put in
your e-mail address there and click the button.  Click on "Email My
Password To Me" assuming that you have no clue what it is.  Once you get
the e-mail with your password, you should go to "List my other
subscriptions" because if someone else has subscribed you maliciously,
chances are they have subscribed you to a bunch of different lists. 
>From this same web page, you will be able to unsubscribe yourself from
any lists that you are on.

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